Members of the international scientific expedition Expedition Cyclops have discovered a living specimen of the Attenborough echidna, an egg-laying mammal that lives on the Indonesian island of New Guinea. This situation was officially reported Web site project.
The Attenborough echidna is named after the famous British television presenter and naturalist David Attenborough. Until now the species was known only from a specimen found in 1961. No one has seen these creatures since.
The expedition team managed to prove the existence of the Attenborough echidna while examining the Cyclops Mountains in the Indonesian province of Papua in New Guinea. This region remains one of the least explored places in the world.
Experts placed cameras in mountain forests for four weeks but could not find any trace of the animal. But on the last day of his stay, the elusive animal was still featured in photographs, making it the first photograph in history to capture this mammal.
“The Attenborough echidna has the spines of a hedgehog, the nose of an anteater, and the feet of a mole. “The reason the echidna is so different from other mammals is that it belongs to monotremes, a group of egg-laying individuals that split off from the general tree of mammal life about 200 million years ago,” explained Oxford University biologist James Kempton, head of the expedition.
In addition to the echidna, scientists also found an entirely new species of land shrimp that lives in trees in the Cyclops Mountains. Creatures adapted to life in the forest thanks to the high humidity.
Biologists before opened There is a new species of tarantula with unique colors in Thailand.